This file describes the procedures used to generate the empirical results that appear in �Welfare Payments and Crime,� written by C. Fritz Foley.

The results can be recreating using two files.  The first of these is the file that contains the stata code used to generate the results in Figure 2 and Tables 3-8.  The other figure, and Tables 1 and 3 describe aspects of the sample, so they are not created in this file.  The second file is the data file.

To generate the results in the paper, run the stata code in the first file, calling the data in the second file.  The code is computationally intensive because standard errors in some of the analysis are calculated using a block bootstrap technique.  I therefore suggest running the code using Stata MP that allows for batch processing.  

The data are organized at the city/date level.  Below are the definitions for the variables that appear in the data file.
totrat: crime rate for all crimes 
totcrime: count of reported incidents for all crimes 
ecrat: crime rate for financially motivated crimes 
eccrime: count of reported incidents for financially motivated crimes 
nonecrat: crime rate for other crimes
noneccrime: count of reported incidents for other crimes
burgt: : count of reported incidents of burglary 
larct:: count of reported incidents of larceny-theft 
motort: count of reported incidents of motor vehicle theft 
robt: count of reported incidents of robbery 
fst10: a dummy that is equal to one in the first ten days of the month and zero otherwise 
his: a dummy that is equal to one for cities where food stamp payments are not exclusively made during the first ten days of the month
fst10his: a dummy that is equal to one in the first ten days of the month and zero otherwise interacted with a dummy that is equal to one for cities where food stamp payments are not exclusively made during the first ten days of the month 
popind: the Time Since Payment Index.  This index is defined in the text, and it is an index between zero and one that reflects the average number of days since welfare recipients received their last payment. 
avgtemp: average  temperature measured in degrees Fahrenheit
precip: amount of precipitation measured in inches
snowfall: amount of snowfall measured in inches 
holiday: a dummy that is equal to one on U.S. federal holidays and zero otherwise 
city: name of the city 
crdate: date, as measured in Stata  
crdow: day of the week, as measured in Stata 
crmon: month of the year
cryr: year 
crday: day of the month 
ctdwn*: a set of city*day of the week fixed effects
ctmnyr: a variable that has a unique value for each city*month*year combination in the data
crdn*:  a set of day of the month fixed effects
popgrpn*: a set of fixed effects for 0.1 increments of the Time Since Payment Index 
